Imagine being a woman who survived domestic violence.
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Imagine that you found the courage not only to leave this toxic relationship, but also to report it to the relevant authorities.
Imagine having to fight for custody of your child.
Imagine that the DYP recommends to the court, despite everything, to entrust sole custody to the violent father, ignoring the recommendations of pediatricians and the accusations of the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions.
Imagine that your children could be taken away from you because you are judged, according to DPJ workers, as being alienating.
Alienating, because you “seem worried and [vous] place your worries on your children.
Alienating, because you “transmit your fear from father to child.”
- Listen to the interview with Me Valérie Assouline, lawyer specializing in family law and journalist Florence Lamoureux read testimonies on Yasmine Abdelfadel’s show via QUB :
Alienating, because you have a “too negative opinion of the father and this can rub off on the children”.
A horror film, right?
This is exactly the situation in which hundreds of women find themselves today in Quebec. They are pharmacists, civil servants, psychologists, teachers, and they fight to assert their rights as mothers first and victims of domestic violence second.
It is thanks to Florence Lamoureux, journalist at QUB, that we have compiled these stories. And the more we talk about it, the more women come forward. Their stories may be different, but they have one common characteristic: they are women in distress who have not only been abandoned by the system; he attacks them.
One might believe that there must be truth in what the DPJ claims; caution is indeed required. But when we talk to dozens of family lawyers who work with these women every day, we see that this is a systemic problem. Not a few anecdotes gleaned along the way. These lawyers no longer know where to turn, where to turn so that these SOS can be heard. They no longer know what to do to stop children being taken away from their mothers, their main figure of protection. Meanwhile, our authorities are sleeping on the gas and letting the DPJ quietly become the directorate for the protection of violent men.